Real Estate

Looking to buy a place in Boston? Got about $37,500,000.00 burning a hole in your pocket, plus a (literal) boatload of money to spend on housing-related expenses every month? Why not check this out:

Boston Globe: At $37.5m, Millennium Tower condo tops most everything

I have no idea how people pay that much money for a house. That would more than double the current record for a home (single family or condo) in the City of Boston, set in March of 2013 - $14,500,000.00. The highest condo sale was in 2011, for $13.2 million, and led to the Boston Globe putting its foot in its mouth about who bought the unit (they reported that the buyer was a local real estate attorney, who I actually know fairly well, but he was a trustee for the real buyer, who is not at all named on record).

Want to know what the REAL ESTATE TAXES will be on that baby? Assuming it sells for asking price, and the city assesses the value of the property at the sale price (it will likely be close to that), the annual taxes will be $471,750.00. That's $39,312.50 per month.

And let's not forget, this is a condominium unit. So there will additionally be condominium fees, which I suspect will be crazy high as well, given that this is a unit in a luxury building with a whole bunch of common area spread out over 60 floors, and this is certainly the unit with the highest percentage of the common charges. I bet the entire monthly maintenance - taxes and condo fees - on this unit will be well over the median annual income in the City (which, in 2012, was just over $51K).

I just... can't even. That's crazy even by Boston standards! It would also make this one of the top 10 most expensive penthouses in the country. (The fact that there are more expensive penthouses also just boggles my mind - I got curious and found the record, according to one website, is $125 Million (here)).

All of these facts and figures are probably not at all interesting to anyone but me, I just couldn't let it go without note. There are a lot of really unoriginal thoughts running through my head about it:

Seriously? When Ebola is ravaging Africa and aid organizations are struggling to find funds to help, we have people spending THIRTY SEVEN AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS for a roof over their heads?
I could buy 140 of my condo for that price (but I did get a very good deal on my place).
How in the WORLD do you obtain that much money? And keep it?
I bet whoever buys it doesn't even end up living there full time.

And a few quirky, nerdy, and slightly more original but not unheard of thoughts:
I wonder who will end up representing the buyer?
I wonder how they will take title? Probably a nominee trust, would be my guess, with a lawyer as the trustee so nobody really knows who owns it...
I wonder what the condo docs look like for that condominium. Is it a two-tier condominium? (I get really excited about two-tier condominiums.)
I wonder what that unit's percentage interest is. My guess is somewhere around 1.5-2%, but that's very rough and depends a lot on whether there's a two-tier condominium. I bet there is.

Crazy. Just crazy.

Edited to add: If you are, in fact, interested in this condo unit, please let me know before you approach the seller. I would love to get my broker's license in a hurry and work on this deal. You don't even have to pay me - the seller does. 2.5% of the purchase price. And I could pretty much quit working.